Document History Question - Is it 'legal' to distribute without copy of history?

Can any body help what to do?

Dear all,

Greetings,

I am working as an IT Engineer in a telecom company. My direct manager asked me to prepare the next year 2004 plans report for our department.
I finished from praparing this report and i wrote my name in the Document History part as the person who created this document as usual. It is expected that this document will be updated frequently by me or any other person.

I discovered that is my manager removed the document history part when he sent the report to the General Manager. and at the same time he did not remove the history when it was sent to IT Director.

I talked to him many times about this issue complaining that it is not legal to remove the history of the document. and it is not good to keep the document without creater.

He answered that in his opinion, this depends on the person the report will be submitted to him. In addition to the content of the report.

I said to him that i do not agree on this, but i agreed with him that we will ask an expert in the management field as to get advice based on the scientific opinion.

I noticed that you have wide experience in the documetntation field and decided to ask you.

Many thanks in advance for your help,
Ashraf

aastal said:

... i wrote my name in the Document History part as the person who created this document as usual. It is expected that this document will be updated frequently by me or any other person.

I discovered that is my manager removed the document history part when he sent the report to the General Manager. and at the same time he did not remove the history when it was sent to IT Director.

Click to expand...

First of all, welcome to the Cove, Ashraf

I will more or less agree with your conclusions, but I think we need more info.

In the mean time, I must say that with or without a document control procedure, it makes sense to keep information about the doument history.

Question:

When you say "not legal"... Do you mean acc. to your internal QMS, a standard like ISO 9001 or something similar? It all depends on what your internal procedures say.

If you have a written procedure covering document control, I suggest that you look there first.

/Claes

Legal???

I agree you need to define your use of word "legal."

In my organization, we understand that until all necessary approvals are made and document is officially "issued," it is just in limbo - a pending document.

The mere fact someone creates a document does not put it into a controlled state and therefore [maybe what you refer to as] "legal."

Based on the way you have phrased your query, it seems the document is merely making the rounds for approval or even just for commentary before the approval stage.

Your supervisor may be on the right track, but he is far from clear on what organization policy is. Sounds like he needs help in interpreting organization policy.

Tell us more and we can help you get on the right track.

Oh yeah! Welcome to the Cove

Hi,

First allow me to thank you for your reply.

When i used the word legal, i was meaning the standard we are following. We do have templates for all document types.

As i said, it is expected that this document will be updated frequently (maybe 2 times every month). my supervisor did not gave me any reasons for removing the document history.

The only thing he said, in his opinion, even he agree that their must be a document history, but sometimes he can remove this part from the report depending on the person that this report will be directed to. and depending on the content of the report.

In fact, i wrote a lot of documents before with history and this is the first time i faced this situation form a year ago.

I do agree that some templates may not require history part while the others may require, but for the SAME template (that we agreed before that it will contain history part) he removed the history when it was sent to general manager and at the same time he did not remove when he sent it to IT director.

I told him, i know that we have two options:
1. To have a document with a history
2. To have a ducument without a history

but i did not hear about a document that sometimes it contains a history and sometimes we can remove the history.

Hope that clear the situation,
Thanks
Ashraf

aastal said:

Hi,

As i said, it is expected that this document will be updated frequently (maybe 2 times every month). my supervisor did not gave me any reasons for removing the document history.

The only thing he said, in his opinion, even he agree that their must be a document history, but sometimes he can remove this part from the report depending on the person that this report will be directed to. and depending on the content of the report.

but i did not hear about a document that sometimes it contains a history and sometimes we can remove the history.

Click to expand...

Perhaps we can help more if we new what this document was. If it requires "changing" 2 times a month, then I assume it is not a work instruction or procedure. Is it a record? You refer to it as a report. Is it a report of inspection activities? Surveliance activities? Or is it a status report of internet on-line usage?

The point I am trying to make is what is the purpose of this document and how does it fall into your QMS? If it doesn't....don't sweat it. If it does, then properly define what it is and establish and follow the controls for this document.

Hope this helps a bit.

CarolX

There are two parts of 4.2.3 that are important here.

4.2.3 c) "to ensure that changes and the current revision status of documents are identified."

The first thing is "to ensure that changes ... of documents are identified". When a change is made, how does the reader know what changed? Many organizations meet this through the change (or document) history. Secondly, "to ensure ... the current revision status of documents are identified". This has two parts, what is the revision of the document, and what revision should I be using? Both of these questions can also be answered by a change history.

In either case, the document history is one way to meet the requirements, but they are not the only way. Also, the change history does not necessarily have to accompany the document, depending on your needs and your documentation.

As far as "legal", If you can forward a document without the history and meet both parts of 4.2.3 c) then you might want to look at your documentation and decide if adjustments can be made.

Hope this helps, and yes, welcome to the Cove!

Excerpts are okay in reports, too.

I used to take audits reports submitted in "Word" and copy and paste the pertinent sections in my report to Management. If someone wants to extrapolate sections of a "so called" controlled document and use it in a report, why not. The reports aren't controlled in the same way. Our audit reports were controlled "templates". Not sure if this is what the Manager did, but "Why not?". JMHO